Three Gifts for Christ


I am so excited to share our Christmas tradition this year. This is our fourth Christmas together as a family and the past few years we have sort of been "trying out" Christmas traditions. Last year we did the Christmas Jar, we've done an angel tree, etc. They've all been great, but nothing felt like it was ours. This idea came to me in March and I have been eagerly anticipating putting it in to action for months. Hope you'll join with us!


I have always been fascinated by the wise men who traditionally make an appearance at the nativity scene. Maybe it's because camels were such a popular motif around my house due to my mom growing up in Saudi Arabia? I don't know, but their journey is one of my most favorite. So much of how we celebrate Christmas is about giving gifts, that I felt it was appropriate to delve a little deeper into their story and take a cue from the original gift givers, the Magi. You can find their beautiful story in Matthew Chapter 2, but our family tradition focuses on this piece: 


 I don't think the wise men just grabbed whatever was on sale Black Friday at the farmers market and threw it in their saddle bags. And clearly they weren't thinking about "age appropriate" gifts for the young child either, at least no one brought Winston any frankincense anyway. The gifts were a form of worship. The Wise men were going to glorify the Savior of the World, if there was ever a time to put thought and meaning into a Christmas present, this was it.

Gold- Gold symbolized royalty. We sometimes refer to the wise men as kings, so perhaps that seems like a natural gift choice for them, but the gold had nothing to do with the divinity of the gift givers. It was about the gift receiver. The wise men brought Christ gold to acknowledge that they knew he was royal. They knew He was the Prince of Peace, they knew He was the King of Kings.

Frankincense- Frankincense is very fragrant and was used as a perfume, but more importantly it was an ingredient in the incense burned in the temple (Exodus 30:34). When the incense was lit, the smoke rising from the alter represented the prayers of the people to God in the most holy and sacred place on earth. The wise men brought Frankincense as their testimony that this child was in fact that very God, the Lord Jesus Christ, whom they were worshiping in their temples.

Myrrh- Myrrh was another fragrant substance used in perfumes and ointments, specifically during burials. What a strange gift for the Magi to bring to a baby, ointment for burial? Seems kind of morbid. Then again, in John 19:39 we read that myrrh was used during Christ's own burial to prepare his body for the tomb. The wise men brought myrrh to bear witness of the forthcoming death of Christ. They knew he was born into the world to die, to die for us that we might live. It was their way to show appreciation for Christ's atonement, to express love for what He would soon do for them.

I'll admit I don't know for sure that these are the reasons the wise men brought what they did, I wasn't there to ask them. But from my research of the gifts, I can't help but think these men had incredible reverence for their Lord. What a beautiful way to worship him, with gifts that bear testimony of who He is. So for our family tradition, we will also be giving three gifts to Christ, one of gold, one of frankincense, and one of myrrh. We've decided to do three service projects as a family to represent each of these gifts.


  For the gift of gold in connection to its symbolism of royalty, we'll do a service project that requires money. Something we've done in the past, like choosing a gift to give off an angel tree, or giving groceries for a holiday dinner to a needy family, would be perfect. This is probably something most people already do at Christmas time. This doesn't have to be big, trust me our holiday budget is the furthest thing from big, but I wanted it to be meaningful. I think I'll treat it sort of like tithing, 10% of our gift budget this year will go to this project.


Since the gift of frankincense symbolizes Christ's divinity, this should be a gift that draws your family closer to Him spiritually. Maybe you want to join in the church choir Christmas program, or spend a little more time studying His words in the scriptures this December. For our gift of frankincense this year, we chosen to read the entire Book of Mormon cover to cover by December 31st (that's 17.1 pages a day if you start now....ready...go).


This one was the hardest connection for me to make. Myrrh was a testimony of Christ's death for us, or in essence, his condescension to mortality and his ability to die. What it reminded me of was time. Time is something that is unique to mortality, something that was precious during His short life on the earth. As myrrh represents the end of Christ's time here in mortality, we'll give Him gift that requires our time. This year we will spend an evening assembling kits for Primary Children's Medical Center with my cub scout troop, but this could even be something like helping an elderly couple put up their Christmas lights.

I'm excited to get started! My goal in creating our traditions is to make Christmas more centered on Christ, not to make December more hectic. These are things we would consider doing in December anyway, but in connection with the gifts of the Magi they feel even more meaningful. When our kids are older, we'll have a family night at the beginning of the month to learn the significance of the gifts at the nativity and then plan our projects, but for now Evan and I will just do it on our own. I want December to be a time to celebrate the holiday season, and there are lots of other Christmas-y things we do just for fun, but I want our priority to be worshiping Him. This is how we'll put it into action this year.

Merry Christmas!

 p.s. if anyone decides to join in, I'd love to hear about your experiences!

Sources: mostly the Bible Dictionary and also This article

Comments

  1. Oh I love it! We are going to do it for sure. Clever and meaningful!

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